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chapter, he had in mind what I call abduction,
that is, the inference of the minor
premiss from the major and the conclusion.
I do not think, however, that this formal way of
defining Induction and Abduction by reference
to the Syllogism conveys much idea of their
real nature except to a mind that has penetrated
very deeply into the nature of syllogism.
For that reason, in the introductory presentation,
I have abandoned that mode
of looking at the matter. I refer to it
now in order to show you how the first
suggestion of Abduction occurred to me. I
saw at once that this kind of inference
was what we call framing a hypothesis
to explain observed facts. The absolute